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July 10, 2012

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diy | concrete bowl

So I’ve been on a concrete kick lately…there’s no hiding this fact! Thanks to my lovely readers, I now know the difference between concrete and cement. Cement is the powdery substance that turns into concrete when mixed with water and it hardens. Wahoo!!

Concrete is a fantastic material, and I always feel like a craftsman when I’m working with it…

This DIY shows how to make a lovely concrete bowl (and a heavy one!!). To make your own, gather these supplies:

– Water

– Flexible rubbery bucket (Walmart – $5)

– Plastic bowl (for shaping inside of bowl) (Walmart – $2)

– Canola oil and paper towel

– Gloves (I used rubbery garden gloves, which cleaned off very easily)

– Container for mixing (I used an old wheel barrow)

– Stir stick

– Scoop

– 60 lb bag cement mix (Lowes – $3)

Then follow these 8 steps:

1. Prepare a gallon of water – you’ll use it in a bit.

2. Canola oil time! Using the paper towel, coat inside of rubbery bucket with canola oil. Coat inside and outside of plastic bowl with canola oil. This step ensures easy removal from the molds at the end!!

3. Put on your gloves.

4. Dump bag of cement powder into wheel barrow.

5. Following the directions on your bag of cement, slowly add water. (Be careful that you don’t dump too much water)

6. Begin mixing. Add more water as needed.

7. Once you have a workable consistency, scoop mixture into your flexible bucket until you have several inches of concrete.

8. Then place the plastic bowl in the center of the bucket and fill with more of the mixture. Work the plastic bowl into the concrete already in the bucket. The weight of the concrete in the bowl will help create the indentation.

All that’s left is allowing your bowl to dry completely! Make sure it’s drying on a level surface!

Enjoy your new concrete bowl. It will make a gorgeous centerpiece for inside or outside!

till tomorrow,

Rebecca

P.S. I’m off to NM this week!!! So excited … I’ve never been there before! Anything I should pack?!

LOVE the concrete bowl! One important thing to remember about working with cement is that after you have poured it into your mold, tap the edges around the mold with something like a hammer handle or something like it for about 5 minutes. What that does is help burp the bubbles out of your cement and it makes for a smoother finished product. Also, always make sure you wear gloves and glasses too as cement is harmful to your skin. Check out the items that I have made with cement too on my blog at http://www.nikitaland.wordpress.com (IE: cement candle holders from Nyquil bottles, or a candle holder from a perfume box, and cement candle holder from a latex glove!) Be creative, the possibilities are endless!

That's not the difference between cement and concrete. That's like saying the difference between flour and bread is that flour is dry and bread is flour that has been mixed with water. You're correct that cement is the powdery substance, usually Portland Cement is used and it's the hardening agent in concrete. Concrete is a mixture of gravel, sand, cement, and other compounds depending on the intended purpose of the concrete. If you nix the gravel, then you have mortar. Other combinations have other specific names.

thought this would be an interesting project but the pics are not helpful to me because it looks as though you have just covered an existing plastic bowl with concrete. wish you would have shown how you did the BOWL mold and how you removed the plastic bowl…. have a hard time believing this one..

Anonymous

May 14th, 2015 at 6:16 pm

I'm confused about why you put concrete inside the inner bowl. Did you make a second container? If it is just for weight, wouldn't rocks or bricks or something equally heavy do the trick without wasting all that wonderful cement? What does the outside look like? Does it mimic the bowl? I have got to try this, but I think I will use 2 bowls of different sizes. I know canola oil works, but just fyi, so does safflower oil, wd40, and Pam. I love the thickness of the bowl itself, it will look really nice on my deck filled with succulents.

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